Short answer
Open the team’s usage page in the Netlify dashboard and see which line grew: web requests, compute (functions and similar), bandwidth or production deploys. If the sites are paused, a paid plan can buy a credit pack to bring them back, and a free plan has to upgrade or wait for the next billing cycle. Then fix the cause: an app that polls or refetches, functions that run long, or bot traffic you can block with Firewall Traffic Rules. Auto recharge is off by default, so a paused site means the plan limit was reached, not that a payment failed.
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Where the credits go, and the fix
01
The credit balance ran out
“all of your web projects (sites/apps) are paused and visitors to your web projects will find a Site not available page at each of your web project’s URLs.” Netlify, How credits work
When the team’s credits are used up, Netlify pauses its sites until more credits are bought or the next billing cycle starts. On a paid plan, buy a credit pack to bring them back now (the free plan can’t buy credits and has to upgrade), then fix whatever used them so it doesn’t happen again next cycle.
02
One site took every site down
“Please note that if one site/web project exceeds its limits, all sites/projects on your account will be paused.” Netlify, Billing FAQ for credit-based plans
Credits are shared across the team, so a busy or broken project can pause the others. Fix the busy site first. A site can be moved into its own team, but that team needs its own plan and credits, and a feature that needs a higher plan may have to be turned off before the move.
03
Find the line that grew
“Usage is calculated for all web projects (sites/apps) on your team from the Netlify team dashboard.” Netlify, Monitor usage for credit-based plans
Usage is shown for the whole team, so use the daily credit chart to see which line grew and on which day, then check what was deployed or what traffic arrived that day.
04
Functions run long or use large memory
“Compute consumes 10 credits per GB-hour.” Netlify, How credits work
Compute is billed by memory and time, so a function that waits on a slow API, loops, or is called on every page view adds up. Make it return sooner, or call it less.
05
Every request costs credits
“Web requests use 2 credits per 10 thousand (10,000) requests.” Netlify, How credits work
Every request costs credits, including ones from an app that polls an API or refetches on every focus, and from crawlers. Poll less. Static files avoid function compute, but each request for them still counts, cached or not. Caching a function’s response saves running the function every time.
06
Bots or unwanted traffic
“Create Firewall Traffic Rules to block or allow project traffic based on:” Netlify, Firewall Traffic Rules
If requests come from a country or IP range you don’t serve, block it with Firewall Traffic Rules in the project’s security settings. Free and Personal plans get only a few rules per project.
Checked against the vendor’s docs on : Netlify docs: How credits work; Netlify docs: Billing FAQ for credit-based plans; Netlify docs: Monitor usage for credit-based plans; Netlify docs: Firewall Traffic Rules; Netlify docs: Caching overview; Netlify docs: Resume paused projects.
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Related: Netlify function timeout · Vercel bill spike · Page not found on refresh (Netlify or Vercel) · Bolt or Lovable build fails on deploy